Schools and Their Food Trash
American school children generate sixty seven pounds of lunch trash per school year.22 Over the course of twelve years of school that adds up! 1.2 billion pounds of space could be freed each year if every public school attending American child packed a waste-free lunch. Children would know that they can help save the planet by making the landfills last longer. 23
How does this compare with waste generated per day on average by Americans? The average American produces 4.4 pounds of trash per day. A line of full garbage trucks could reach the moon with the amount of trash generated in America each year alone. We could bury 990,000 football fields under six feet of waste.24 What analogies could students generate about school lunch waste? The students can use local school data collected in the first student activity to determine amounts they create and compare to national averages.
Additionally the costs of prepackaged lunches are astronomical. It costs an average of $723.60 per school year to buy prepackaged lunch components, or $4.02 per day. If students pack waste-free lunches it would only cost $477 per year or $2.65 per day.25 Students could also calculate the costs as an additional learning activity.
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